RTI for Activists & NGOs — free certified course
Quick Reply: A free, certified course for people who use RTI at campaign scale — NGO staff, civil-society activists, community organisers. 4 modules · 5 hours · self-paced, ending in an 18-question exam and a verifiable certificate. You leave with a campaign RTI plan, a §4 suo-motu audit checklist, and a pattern-mining method for the replies you already hold.
Who this is for. This is not a beginner's filing tutorial (that is the Citizen Crash Course). It is for the person who files forty RTIs a year, or who should: an NGO programme officer building an evidence base, a ward-level organiser fighting an encroachment, a researcher mapping scheme leakage across a district. The course treats RTI as infrastructure for a campaign, not as a one-off letter.
What you leave with
- A campaign RTI plan: the 12-application skeleton that covers any issue from money to mechanism to outcome.
- A §4(1)(b) suo-motu audit checklist — scoring any public authority's proactive disclosures against the sixteen clauses, and converting the gaps into a first-letter demand.
- A pattern-mining method: how to sit on 50+ replies and extract the story the numbers tell (pendency by office, denial by exemption, delay by month).
- A second-appeal and CIC complaint strategy that matches the right vehicle to the right failure.
- The certificate: serial-numbered, publicly verifiable, LinkedIn-ready.
Modules
- Module 01 — Campaign-scale RTI design — how to decompose a campaign question into requestable records; designing the first 12 applications; keeping asks severable so §10 works for you.
- Module 02 — §4 suo-motu disclosure compliance audit — the sixteen mandatory clauses of §4(1)(b); scoring an authority's website; the follow-up letter that turns missing disclosure into an obligation.
- Module 03 — Pattern-mining your RTI corpus — building a reply register; classifying refusals by exemption and office; turning 60 replies into one publishable finding.
- Module 04 — Sustaining a campaign + protecting yourself — sequencing appeals so the campaign outlives the enthusiasm; harassment and vexatious-application pushback; working with journalists without burning sources.
- Final exam — 18 questions · 12 minutes · 70% to pass.
Final exam
- 18 questions, drawn from all four modules
- 12-minute timer, 3 attempts
- 70% to pass
- Tab-locked, with the Academy Honor Code
Certificate
Print-ready PDF with a serial number in the ACT-XXXXXXXXXX series, a public verification URL anyone can check, and a LinkedIn-ready badge. Valid 12 months; a short refresher quiz renews it. The certificate says you studied the method — the campaign plan you build in Module 01 is what proves it.
How the exam-and-certificate system works
Every certificate is issued against your RTI Wiki Academy account, serial-stamped, and verifiable at the public verification page — an employer or funder can confirm it without emailing us. Certificates are revoked for Honor Code violations detected in the exam analytics.
FAQs
Is the course really free?
Yes — all RTI Wiki Academy courses are free, including the exam and the certificate.
Can my whole team take it?
Yes; each member registers separately so each certificate is individually verifiable. Teams that take it together usually run Module 02's audit as a single exercise on one authority.
Do I need to have filed an RTI before?
Some familiarity helps, but Module 01 re-covers the mechanics quickly. Absolute beginners should do the Citizen Crash Course first.
Is this a government certificate?
No. It is an RTI Wiki Academy certificate — an independent civil-society course, not a government or university qualification.
Hindi?
The course text is English; the templates it teaches (application, first appeal) are bilingual and downloadable.
Related
Last reviewed: 27 August 2026. Module list, exam format and certificate mechanics verified against the live course pages.